


the times they are a-changin'

by ryanreynolds



Category: Band of Brothers
Genre: Angst with a Happy Ending, Healing, M/M, Post-War, Reunions, Unhealthy Coping Mechanisms, when will i learn to write summaries?
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-07-02
Updated: 2017-07-02
Packaged: 2018-11-22 12:47:43
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 5,510
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/11380497
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ryanreynolds/pseuds/ryanreynolds
Summary: The war ended four months ago, but the aftermath has left Webster wondering who the real lucky bastard were; those of them that made it home alive, or those who were left behind in Europe?And then suddenly, Joseph Liebgott returns like a shadow in the night, and everything is turned on its head





	the times they are a-changin'

**Author's Note:**

> Title from Bob Dylan 'The Times They Are A-Changin'' :)
> 
> No offense intended to the real heroes of Easy Company; I am, as ever, in awe of those who made the sacrifice to fight in one of the bloodiest and most inhumane wars of mankind's history.

The first time David saw Joe after the war had ended, and they all went their separate ways at the docks, he’s so drunk that he could barely stand, and his skin felt like paper and porcelain, and his heart felt so heavy that he thinks it might knock him off his chair.

He didn’t think he’d ever be able to move again.

In front of him, there’s a drink – he thought it’s rum and coke but to be honest, he quit thinking about what he put in his mouth years before in the war, so he just kind of went with whatever the bartender put in front of him. If it’s got percentages, it’s sound, and no one would hear David complain.

The war was hell, but at least, he had his friends there. He had Talbert and his happy smile, he had Lipton and his caring person, he had Malarkey and his warm hugs, he had Christenson and his witty remarks, he had Nixon and his understanding of how the rich world worked. And he had Liebgott, Joe Liebgott, and everything knowing him entailed. Joe was a hurricane and David was stuck in its eye, willingly and gladly. Never had a person made him more curious, made him more angry, made him more happy. All these people were people he could count on in the living hell that was France, Holland, Germany, Austria.

Here in America, home of the free and the brave, he had no one. His father had screamed, yelled, and hit him when he broke the news that he would not return to college, to Harvard – returning home to this fake normalcy made him feel hollow, he was too experienced to live a life in this doll-house world. His mother had cried and asked him to change his mind, to tell his father he had lied. David of the past would have swallowed his own wishes and done as his parents told him to; David of the present was all out of fucks to give, the pain of losing so much and gaining nothing in return – Joe had just left, gone to San Francisco and his ocean, and _fucking left David like he meant fuck shit_ \- and he would never allow his parents to control his life.

He downed the drink and put it down a little too hard, and the bartender sent him a dirty look. David just smiled – a drunken, bleary smile – at him, it wasn’t the first time tonight the bartender had eyed the ex-paratrooper with suspicion.

“Oh, bartender, bartender, tell me a story,” David asked with a hoarse voice and a shaky smile. The bartender rolled his eyes.

“Don’t you think you’ve had enough, marine?”

David shook his head with indignation. “Not marine, ‘trooper.”

The bartender raised his eyebrows, his voice confused, “what?”

“I was a paratrooper,” David repeated, and as he said the words, he found that there wasn’t any pride in them, not as there once had been. _Well, that’s what you get for fucking up your life, Webster_.

The bartender looked impressed. “Impressive, sir. You did a great job over there.” He paused as David made a face. “Huh?”

“I didn’t do that much but survive, really,” he told with wild hand gestures and a pained voice, even he could hear the pain and then he knew it was evident, “I got shot once, you know? Right in the leg, hurt like a bitch though it wasn’t that deep. I had to stay for four months – missed out on Bastogne and my best pal dying – because of some bullshit infection that almost killed me.”

The bartender didn’t say anything, waiting for him to continue. “And you know the worst thing? When I got back, they all hated me. Joe hated me for missing out on Hoobler’s death. Joe hated me and I couldn’t say I almost died, you know, because he was actually on the front for months, at risk of dying, and I was in a hospital bed. I was snug as a bug, burnin’ up with fever, yeah, but he – they were dying of the freezing cold and Kraut artillery.”

David shook his head, lost in thought for a moment, remembering the months in the hospital where fever made him delirious and made him hallucinate. He remembered asking the nurse if Joe was gonna come soon. She looked she was on the verge of breaking down, so he stopped asking her and moved on to another nurse. _Where’s Joe? I need Joe, I need Lieb. Where’s Lieb?_ One of them actually answered him once, when the fever was really bad and he hadn’t eaten in three days and was vomiting up even water, that Joe was gonna arrive soon, if only David, is alright for me to call you David, sir?, would just hold on. All he had to was hold on and get better, and then Joe would come.

He shook his head, reentering the presence, and grabbing the glass to shake in front of the bartender. “Well, I can’t drink this, if there is nothing, can I?”

“You sure you need more?”

David didn’t answer, just nodded, before returning to his own, haunting thoughts. He remembered once reading, that only the dead ever escaped war. Struggling to not think about the war for just a second, he was forced to agree.

No soldier ever came home from a battlefield; everyone had lost a little of themselves, of their humanity, back at the haunting wasteland. A battlefield was graveyard for thousands of innocent and corrupted souls, and even more for dignity, honor, love, and humanity. There was no fairness in war.

The bartender came back with what he told him was vodka on the rocks, a concerned look in his eyes.

“Just what I needed,” David whispered. Vodka always made him so drunk he couldn’t remember a thing in the morning. That meant he couldn’t remember his dreams as well. 

Anything to not remember Liebgott’s face. His dark hair, his dark eyes, his sunlight smile and clouded smirk. Liebgott was like the weather, everchanging. New and exciting.

David downed the glass. He felt like throwing up.

When David Webster saw Joe Liebgott for the first time after the war had ended, he was hollowed out from the inside, he felt like throwing up, he felt like crying and screaming and kicking, he felt like going outside and lay down and just never move. David Webster felt like he’d had the worst day of his life, and that the next day was gonna be just as bad, if not even worse.

“Web?”, the voice that startled him was achingly familiar, and it was a strange whisper, almost strangled.

He turned his head slightly, before deciding that he didn’t even have the energy for that. He just felt tired. Maybe he should just go home, sleep until the clock rang twelve times, and the sun had risen marking a new day, a new beginning maybe. 

“Shit, Web,” the voice said, this time stronger, and full of concern and fake annoyance.

David’s brain was fuzzy, and he felt empty, and drained, and he couldn’t even muster the energy to turn his head for more than a second. In this moment in time, he felt like he was mute, he had no voice – and if he did, he couldn’t reach it. He couldn’t make his voice work, and he was choking on his tongue, trying to make it work.

Instead he just motioned for the bartender who nodded with a frown. A few seconds later a new vodka, on the rocks it looked like, was put in front of him, but as he tried to grab it, a hand stretched out and stopped him.

“Web.”, the world was oddly blurry tonight, now that he thought about, “Web, Jesus Christ, please just look at me.”

All he could say, for some reason, was, “you’re Jewish. You don’t believe in Jesus, remember?”

He thought the snort he heard sounded more like a sob.

“Please. David.”

David shook his head; Joe Liebgott was the one person in the entire universe who could make him fall apart with just one look. And that was when he was feeling pretty good. Now, though, his whole world had crumpled around him, forcing him to live in the rubbles of what could’ve been a good life – a secretive double-life but better than this.

He almost had no money left, and now Joe had taken his vodka.

“Vodka, Joe.” He almost felt ashamed at how thin his voice was.

A hand came to his shoulder and he was forcibly turned, his sluggish eyes slowly turning to look at the man beside him.

He looked good, better than David had felt for months, for years. His eyes were a little empty, sure, but there was some brightness in them still, and that made David happy and warm; his hair was clean cut, and he thought of how Joe must’ve finally opened a saloon for himself – David hoped that much. Joe was still so fucking skinny, maybe even skinnier than he’d been in Europe, but at least his skin had colour, and he didn’t seem like he would fall apart.

Not like David.

Joe looked good and alive, and David almost wanted to cry at the sight. No one deserved to find happiness and peace after the war as much as Joe; Landsberg had torn something inside him, and seeing that he had found a way to get by, lifted a weight from David’s shoulders that he didn’t know he’d been carrying.

“Web.” His voice seemed faraway, and David blinked confused at him.

Just then he began wondering. Joe Liebgott was born and raised in San Francisco, no way, he would’ve left that city, his family, the ocean behind. And David wasn’t in San Fran, not that he remembered that is. He wasn’t that drunk, he thought, that he couldn’t remember going to San Fransisco. He’d have remembered that. He’d have remembered hoping to meet Joe. And he didn’t, so ergo, he wasn’t in San Fransisco. Which meant that Joe had actually left his homecity and was in downtown New York.

“Whatcha doing here?”, his voice was as slurred, as his vision was blurred.

Joe looked at him with intensity before nodding. “You’re a drunk idiot.” He helped David get up from the stool, cast a few dollar bills on the bar before guiding David out with a ‘since when do you drink this goddamn much? You Nixon or something?’, and David couldn’t do much else but lean into his warmth and laugh a little, though it sounded more like sobbing.

How they got to a hotel room, he couldn’t really figure out, all he knew was that Joe was in front of him, beside him, and that Joe was warm, and whole, and alive. And he was _here_ , he was here with David.

“What are you doing here, Joe?”, he sounded more sober now than before, and he felt more sober, which made him irritated, as sober equaled hurting, and missing, and remembering, and just generally feeling shitty.

Joe seemed lost in thought, looking pointedly at everything but David, before sighing. “I came to see you, actually.”

David must’ve looked more confused than he felt, because Joe just looked at him with a deeply unimpressed look. “I tried calling you, the number you left in one of your letters, but I only got through to your dad who proceeded to scream at me, that if I was the ‘infamous Joe’, then I was the one who’d corrupted you.”

“You never-”, David started, trying to deny everything his father had said – how dared the man? Joe Liebgott was the one thing that kept him going through that sickness in that hospital – but Joe only shook his head, holding up his hand and motioning for him to be silent. David shut his mouth, which made Joe smirk a little. It made Davids heart ache for the days of the war when that smirk was ever-present. And wasn’t that just a little bit fucked up? He missed the days of howling mortars, screaming men, and dying friends more than he missed his family.

“Woah, David Kenyon Webster with his mouth shut? It really is a whole new world,” he winked and still fucking smirked – and for two seconds, David felt like he really was back in Austria, when they were friends and at war, but also more at peace than he ever had been, here, back home in star-spangled US of A – before quickly sobering, and David struggled to keep up with the changing of moods, mind still caught halfway in Europe, “and then I went to that bar, because I was angry at myself for spending so much money on going here, and then you weren’t home, and scared for you because your father seemed furious but admitted to not knowing where you were, before adding that he didn’t really fucking care. And then you sat there by the bar, fucking drunk out of your mind, looking like a ghost.”

David took a minute to soak all those goddamn words up, process them, understand them, before licking his lips, and, finally, answering. “I though about going to you. Some time next week.” A beat. “I have all the time in the goddamn world, all of a sudden.”

He felt like he’d only survive this conversation with a little more vodka. Besides, who the hell were Joe to judge? They’d been drinking alcohol like sponges suck water at VE-day.

VE-day. Now that brought back memories that needed both vodka _and_ whiskey. Where was Lewis Nixon, when you needed him, the pretentious bastard – his Ivy League brother in arms? Probably wherever Winters was, Nixon was like a mother hen of a whole other class, like the major couldn’t take care of himself.

Joe didn’t say anything, only looked at him with dark eyes, like he couldn’t figure David out. Which was bullshit, Joe understood him like nobody else had. Hoobler had understood most of him, Nixon understood the bullshit that came with coming from a rich family, Skinny had understood his wanting to prove himself; Joe seemed to understand his darker sides as well as his better characteristics. 

When he still didn’t say anything, and the silence grew heavy, David panicked. And he began to blabber, just throw everything that came to mind out in the open. “Joe, do you have any vodka? - no? Shame. I could use some vodka. I really want some vodka. Do you know why, Joe? It’s because, Joe, it makes you forget. It makes you forget everyone dying, it makes you forget the sound of mortars, it makes you forget the sound of grenades, of screaming.”

David stopped for a second, looking over at Joe. He’d lit a cigarette in the meantime and was grinning all over his face.

“What?” David huffed, annoyed. That bright grin was too bright for there being no vodka on the table.

And just like that there’s wine and beer, and it’s like VE-day all over again, and suddenly, they’d moved to the living room – David in the sofa, lying as long as he is, and Joe in the chair, lounging and drinking and smiling – and David was rambling once more. But Joe was smiling and so he just kept going.

He talked of his family. That he didn’t dwell on too much because he felt like drinking more and more the longer his family was the subject of his one-sided conversation. There wasn’t that much to tell either, just that they’d kicked him out because he no longer could go their designated way. He no longer belonged at Harvard, among suits and ties, and people who never did their time – not in the Pacific, not in Europe, not on D-day, and who would never understand the way he went pale at loud sounds and couldn’t sleep in the soft beds.

“Marshmellows, Joe, it feels like sleeping on goddamn marshmellows.” Joe nodded and takes a large swig from the bottle. His eyes shone, and David thought of VE-day, of wine and champagne, and of how Joe had never seemed more beautiful, than he was in Hitler’s own home with the old man gone and dead, and them two alive and, well, not _well_ , exactly, but doing much better than the Führer himself.

And then it all fell apart.

“Which reminds of those hospital beds.”, he said, not really to anyone in particular,even if there was only Joe in the room, “it was hell to sleep in them. They were always too hot, too cold. That might have something to do with my fever, now that I think about it. But there was also something in that bed – it gave me this huge wound in my leg, no, wait, that was from the Krauts. But there was infection, you know? I’ve told you this, haven’t I, Joe? Infection in the leg wound, and it just kept getting worse. I mean, it had to be the bed, right? There must’ve been something in the bed, Joe, because they couldn’t figure out what it was, and they cleaned the wound, and- Joe?”

David stopped as soon as he saw the look on Joe’s face, a calculated fury, and as hazy as he was, he just couldn’t focus. 

“Joe?”

One word came out of Joe’s mouth, and it and of itself was forced out, like he was suppressing a yell or a sneer. “Infection?”

And then everything clicked, and David flicked his hand. “Ah, I _didn’t_ tell you… weird, I thought I did. But I got shot, they got me, you must remember that, and then I was transported to a hospital, and after two weeks, I began passing out, and getting too warm, too cold, and just being a really fucking pain in the ass for the nurses. I felt real bad about it, too.”

“Yeah, I bet,” sounded it darkly from Joe’s corner of the room, and David glanced briefly at him before downing his wine flask. His world spun pleasently.

“And then I was sick, kept talking, asking the nurses if he was here, when he was gonna be here, and they couldn’t answer, said he was here soon, and that I went into… I can’t fucking remember what they called it, sort of like a coma? I was out cold for a couple of days, to put it simply, and they told me they didn’t think I’d made it.” He pursed his lips, remembering, before his face brightened as the conclusion of the story dawned on him. “But here’s the kicker, Joey, they changed my bed. White and nice, and then I slowly got better. So, really, it was the bed all along. Should’ve just listened to me, Joe.”

“You fucker.”

David looked over at Joe, wide-eyed with surprise, frowning, confused. For one, two, three seconds, and then it dawned on him, and he scrambled to sit up, pain shooting through his head, and nausea making his stomach roll. “I didn’t do anything to the bed on purpose, Joe. You have to believe me! I wanted...” he would’ve continued but the nausea broke through and he lunched forward, ready to run as fast as he could to the bathroom. A bucket came into his field of vision, and he relaxed. Joe had his back. His arm held David comfortingly as he vomited. After, he immediately began explaining again, wiping his mouth. “You have to believe me, Joe! I wanted to go back, I really did. But they said you’d come to me, you know? So I thought it was alright.”

Joe didn’t say anything but arms wrapped David into a hug, that he weakly returned. For the first time in months, in what felt like years, it didn’t feel as though the weariness inside him would make him break apart. He felt home, safe, in Joe’s warm embrace. He leaned into the hug, almost like he was a drowning man, and Joe was the only thing keeping him anchored.

This had been true for years now.

“Tomorrow, Web,” Joe whispered later as he led David to one of the beds, “tomorrow, you and I are gonna have a serious talk.”

And if David held onto Joe’s hand like it was his lifeline, well, Joe was being a pal and didn’t mention it later. Only ruffled his hair, and if he felt lips press against his forehead as he drifted to sleep, well, David was being a pal and didn’t mention it later.

 

As David slowly ate his breakfast – cereal with milk – he did all he could to avoid looking at the lithe, angry Jew staring daggers at him from across the table. His head was exploding, and his stomach was rolling, and he knew that the second he put down his spoon, he’d not be leaving this table till all the cars were on the table.

To be honest, he blamed it all on his parents. Had his parents not kicked him out, he’d have been home to answer the phone call when Joe called him. Had his parents not kicked him out, he wouldn’t have gone to that bar and gotten fucked. And most importantly, had his parents not kicked him out, he wouldn’t have spilled all his secrets to Joe like there was no tomorrow. Because unfortunately there had been a tomorrow, and it was today, and Joe seemed furious.

Apparently, Joe was so furious he could see David stalling as best he could, and just decided that the third degree interrogation didn’t really need postponing. It was, apparently, time to address the elephant in the room.

“So, infection, Web?”, Joe began, voice on the verge of hissing.

David opened and closed his mouth a few times, it was dry, and he wondered if he’d even have any voice at all if he tried speaking. He took the opportunity to drink a little bit of his coffee instead of answering, telling himself it wasn’t just because he was a coward and needed an excuse to postpone the inevitable. 

And then it got too much for Joe. “An infection? Why the fuck couldn’t you be bothered to tell us why you didn’t come back? That was the reason we were angry, you know, we thought you’d left us to the freezing cold and the Krauts.”

David spluttered at that. “Never, I wanted to go back to you after those first weeks. I-” He felt empty for words, not knowing how to phrase his missing of Joe, his longing. How he missed the other guys, Hoobler and Nixon and Christenson and Talbert, but how his mind was almost consumed of thoughts of Joe, how he was doing, whether he’d forgotten him.

He, most of all, didn’t know how to phrase the relief he had felt at seeing Joe in that truck in Haguenau. How he had felt like a weight had been taken off of his shoulders, like his entire body was a little lighter than it had been a second ago. He felt like he could breathe again when he saw that Joe had survived the biting frost and the Kraut artillery. He had remembered stories of exploding trees from fever-hazed patients beside his bed, remembered whispers of one Bill Guarnere and one Joe Toye being admitted to a hospital nearby – ready to be sent home. He remembered fever and nightmares of a screaming Liebgott and a rain of blood amidst the fallen snow. 

Joe looked at him like he knew all of these things and that gave him the courage to continue, not wanting Joe to get mad and leave him again. He didn’t think he’d be able to live fully, knowing he’d driven Joe away.

“I wanted to come back,” he whispered, “I wanted to join you in that frozen hell but I, I couldn’t. They kept eyes on me, and then you were all in the Ardennes and they told me, that no one could make it out there. Not limping like me, anyway.”

As he finished, he couldn’t keep his gaze locked with Joe’s, too many emotions clouded his eyes and David felt like Judgment Day had come, and Joe had attained the position of Judge, Jury, and Executioner.

For the first time, he had the opportunity to really look at the hotel room. It wasn’t fancy, like the hotel rooms his parents would have rented, but it was cozy and in a way he felt like he was home. He didn’t know whether that was due to the room or Joe sitting across from him. Somehow, someway, he felt inclined to believe the latter.

“Web,” Joe spoke softly, and David felt himself relax immensely at the tone, “we were angry, and tired, and hurting, and you came back, you were a reminder of everything we’d lost at Bastogne.”

He wasn’t at Bastogne. He’d understood that by now. David felt tired to his bones.

“But if it was up to me, to make the decision,” he interrupted his train of thoughts, “I would never have wanted you there. It was absolute hell, and I was so goddamn relieved when you came back, looking new as ever, whole and not broken, goddamn it, Web.”

Joe’s voice was starting to sound more and more like a sob, and David moved before he made the conscious decision to, wrapping him up in a hug. 

“I missed you, Joe,” he whispered, trying to blink away the feeling of getting lost inside his own body, burning up with a fever. He was not in a hospital bed, wasting away; he was alive, and he had Joe in his arms once more. It felt like Austria all over again; they were safe and, dare he think it, in love. “I missed you so fucking much.”

Joe’s arms were strong around him, and he felt like crying. If he felt his eyes water and Joe’s shirt go wet, then Joe didn’t comment on it, and if he felt his own shirt go wet and heard a sniffle or two, then David didn’t notice. All that mattered, really, was Joe.

It had been four months since he’d last seen Joe at the docks when they arrived in the US, four months since the war. And as Joe’s arm circled around him, he finally let himself fall apart.

Everything went by in a haze; Joe whispering as he choked on air, soothing words to comfort and heal, and David leaned into the voice.

“I missed you too,” Joe whispered. “No one really gets it at home, they weren’t at Landsberg.”

_Were you even at Landsberg?_

_You know I was._

David pressed his head into the nape of Joe’s neck. In return, hands ran softly through his hair.

The day went by in a flash, though they didn’t really do anything. Exchanged whispers, exchanged stories, nightmares, and struggles.

Joe Liebgott had gotten his job at the taxi company back. It was his coping mechanism, as writing and drinking had been for David; driving through the city with nothing but customers, good and bad and all inbetween, to keep him company had made him think. It made him relax and forget. It made him think of his dreams for the future; reevaluate his plan of marrying a Jewish girl – although, I’m telling you, Web, it’s still a good backup – and as the sun began to set, a whispered revelation came out, that maybe the drives along the beach, along the Pacific, had made him think of David, and of how much he’d have loved it there. The cyan green ocean and the white beaches, it was all so serene, he said. And that someday, he’d love to take him there, to show him that beautiful ocean he’d rambled on about so much over in Europe. The last was a barely audible mumble, and David smiled an easy smile for the first time since coming home from Europe.

As darkness arose, Joe grabbed another wine bottle, and with a pleasant amount of alcohol flowing through his blood stream, he felt like he was on top of the world, that they were on top of the world, him and Joe. Nothing could bring him down, and with the clock nearing midnight, and Joe having to one day go back to San Francisco and his life – he couldn’t play pretend with David for all eternity, as much as he wanted it, Joe had a life and it wasn’t his fault, that David didn’t – and suddenly it felt like time was running out.

He had to say this. Just once.

“Joe,” he whispered but as Joe didn’t seem to give him the time of the day, too focused on the card game in front of them, and the beer by his side, he whispered more urgently, “ _Lieb._ ”

Joe’s head snapped up, and a fond smile – was it fond? It seemed fond, and it filled David with renewed confidence – was displayed on those rosy lips.

“Lieb, I have to tell you something.” David never dared to speak higher than a whisper, and Joe seemed to realize this, as he vacated himself from the chair to move beside David in the sofa. He looked at him expectantly, dark eyes focused, and those red, red lips parted. His raven hair was messy, but it seemed so soft, and David had to restrain himself not to run his hands through it, like he had done back in Austria.

“Lieb, Lieb, Lieb,” he whispered, closing his eyes, gathering all his courage. He would be a coward no longer; no matter how Joe reacted, at least David wouldn’t have been a coward. “I have to share a secret.”

“Spill it, then, Web,” came the hoarse reply, and he felt the words being breathed on his face. He bit back a gasp.

“I think, Lieb,” he gulped, “I think, I’m in love with you.”

He heard the sharp intake of air, and all his bravery crumpled. _Damn it, Webster. Now you’ve done and fucked it up real good, you imbecile._

He quickly moved away, turning his head. “Sorry. I had to say it.”

Nothing in the world could have prepared him for the answer, for the “oh, you idiot, warn a guy next time, yeah?”, for the hand that turned David’s head, and especially not for the lips that captured his.

Joe’s lips were as he remembered, soft as his hair, demanding as his attitude, and every inch the Joe that he had grown to love so, so much.

“Joe, Joe, Joe,” he whispered the other’s name like it was air, hands running through his hair, so soft, so soft, and he almost wanted to cry.

Joe smiled against his lips and breathed a laugh. “There you are, Web. God. I’ve missed you so damn much.”

And for the first time in four months, David Webster truly felt as though he was there. No part of him were lost in the past; his hands were caressing his lover’s neck, skin, cheek, hair, and his lips moved in sync with Joe’s.

“And for the record, you big sap,” Joe breathed against his lips as he broke apart, “I love you too. So damn much.”

David opened his eyes to capture Joe’s eyes, a shining smile brightening on his lips. “Yeah?”

“Yeah.” Joe nodded, one hand caressing David’s cheek.

David leaned into the touch, eyes closing for a second before snapping open. To be sure, that this was not just a dream, a wonderful, wonderful dream – or a terrible, taunting, humiliating nightmare, he slapped himself across the cheek, pinched his arm. Closed his eyes, counted to ten, only to open them and once more lock eyes with Joe. The latter staring at him strangely.

“You really are here,” he gaped, and he felt a tear roll down his cheek.

Joe looked at him with concern for a second before laughing. “You’re such an idiot.” And then recaptured David’s lips.

A week from then, David would follow Joe to San Francisco, to see the Pacific. They’d find an apartment, living together and finding peace together. Joe would wake up crying out, sobbing, promising vengeance on the Nazis for all the murdered Jews. David would hold him all through the night, whispering words of comfort, running his hands through the other’s hair. Meanwhile David would relapse and try to find comfort at the bottom of a bottle, and Joe would sit with him as he puked and cried for his family that no longer wanted to see him.

They would heal together, eventually.

But right now, in the New Yorkian night, there was no future, only the present wherein they were learning to get to know each other as they were outside the army, as civilians. Not as Private David Kenyon Webster, the College Boy, and not as Technician Joseph Liebgott, the Butcherer. But as Joe, as David, as Lieb, as Web.

**Author's Note:**

> Better to be 16 years late to the BoB party than never, am I right? :D
> 
> I enjoy writing for Webgott so much right now, so expect more of these two, they are adorable and very angsty, just as I like them haha
> 
> And if you got here; thank you so much for reading! I hope you enjoyed it just as much as I enjoyed writing it, and getting to know these two :)
> 
> If you _ever_ want to talk, I'm as always at @henrycaevill.tumblr.com!


End file.
